Scan barcode
peelspls's review against another edition
4.0
Junichiro Tanizaki and Ryunosuke Akutagawa are my two most favorite authors of their time. While Some Prefer Nettles was a dreadful bore, these short stories brought me back to why I loved Tanizaki as an author. They have the same sense of lurking suspicion and mystery that The Secret (the first of his short stories I'd read) had.
It feels like every Tanizaki story begins with rich descriptions of nature and idyll in a Japanese town only to reveal that some common person has a secret perversion. It's quite easy to see how kink is expressed subtly, and the cover of the book even describes it as "fetishism, where tradition becomes an instrument of voluptuous cruelty". Feudal servitude aside, the contemporaneous "modern" protagonist of the stories remains a servitude to his own anxiety, a loss of his own history and culture as Japan is opened up to the world.
There is also great emotional weight to each of the characters in the stories. A Portrait of Shunkin for example, shows how a disability can actually allow a relationship between two differently-abled and differently-stationed people in life to prosper. It's odd that the arrangement of the stories has A Blind Man's Tale as the close of the loop that A Portrait of Shunkin begins. Both are about blindness and servitude, although the former is a work of historical fiction and the latter is entirely a work of fiction.
I also find the stories of The Tattooer and Aguri to be interesting characterizations of women claiming authority and power. While Shukin from her eponymous story appears to have power through her genius and exercises it freely through abuse, she is ultimately cast as dependent. The Tattooer was a short, well-written metaphor for the kind of soul-spending creative work (perhaps sex?) that ends up claiming all power from the man and bestows it ultimately unto the woman who is presented as an underling in the story. Aguri too is portrayed as this succubus-like entity who is so omnipresent in her power, so visible and vibrant in her sexual space in the world, that she appears to almost derive all of her energy in the world from a parasitic relationship to her patron.
In short, a very weird and deeply discomfiting set of short stories, but at least you know that going in.
It feels like every Tanizaki story begins with rich descriptions of nature and idyll in a Japanese town only to reveal that some common person has a secret perversion. It's quite easy to see how kink is expressed subtly, and the cover of the book even describes it as "fetishism, where tradition becomes an instrument of voluptuous cruelty". Feudal servitude aside, the contemporaneous "modern" protagonist of the stories remains a servitude to his own anxiety, a loss of his own history and culture as Japan is opened up to the world.
There is also great emotional weight to each of the characters in the stories. A Portrait of Shunkin for example, shows how a disability can actually allow a relationship between two differently-abled and differently-stationed people in life to prosper. It's odd that the arrangement of the stories has A Blind Man's Tale as the close of the loop that A Portrait of Shunkin begins. Both are about blindness and servitude, although the former is a work of historical fiction and the latter is entirely a work of fiction.
I also find the stories of The Tattooer and Aguri to be interesting characterizations of women claiming authority and power. While Shukin from her eponymous story appears to have power through her genius and exercises it freely through abuse, she is ultimately cast as dependent. The Tattooer was a short, well-written metaphor for the kind of soul-spending creative work (perhaps sex?) that ends up claiming all power from the man and bestows it ultimately unto the woman who is presented as an underling in the story. Aguri too is portrayed as this succubus-like entity who is so omnipresent in her power, so visible and vibrant in her sexual space in the world, that she appears to almost derive all of her energy in the world from a parasitic relationship to her patron.
In short, a very weird and deeply discomfiting set of short stories, but at least you know that going in.
caseyreadslol's review
portrait of shunkin reminded me what reading classics is like as assigned reading (drab and a horrific struggle)
paulataua's review against another edition
5.0
A collection of short stories from the writer of ‘Some Prefer Nettles’ and ‘The Key’ . The beauty of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki is that he writes stories about things that I have absolutely no interest in and yet within a few pages I find myself totally drawn in. It is something I can’t explain, and trying to give some summary of the stories wouldn’t help. You just have to try them. ‘A Portrait of Shunkin’ and ‘The Bridge of Dreams’ were my favorites. Wonderful!
alexandrawithanx's review against another edition
4.0
Very interesting, but also boring and a very long read, I returned multiple times to finish this book.
sky_reaper's review against another edition
4.0
How to differentiate dreams from mere memories? Do we dream of memories? Or do memories shape our dreams?
cronosmu's review against another edition
5.0
Puesto en términos simples, Tanizaki debe ser uno de los dos o tres mejores escritores que parió y que habrá parido Japón. Cuando todo se extinga él permanecerá. Esta antología no es solo de cuentos (de los cuales, lo adelanto ya, el mejor es Aguri, algo así como una versión preliminar de esa obra maestra que es [b:Naomi|34462|Naomi|Jun'ichirō Tanizaki|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1366810659s/34462.jpg|1045331]), ya que incluye dos novelas cortas, la magistral [b:Retrato de Shunkin|7784261|Retrato de Shunkin|Jun'ichirō Tanizaki|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327867639s/7784261.jpg|10718206] y [b:El cuento de un hombre ciego|15715625|El cuento de un hombre ciego|Jun'ichirō Tanizaki|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1340285540s/15715625.jpg|21385152], y dependiendo de las definiciones tal vez El puente de los sueños califique como tal, que por sí solas los desfalcadores de Ediciones Siruela venden a precios exorbitantes.
spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition
3.0
I am not writing out of any desire to have others read this. At least, I don't intend to let anyone see it as long as I am alive. If someone happens across it after my death, there will be not harm in that; but even if it is lost on oblivion, if no one ever reads it, I shall have no regret. I write for the sake of writing, simply because I enjoy looking back at the events of the past and trying to remember them one by one.
aubrieyplaza's review
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
tyong's review against another edition
3.0
Man y of this stories brought to me a weird unexplainable feeling out of what I am used to, this is the main reason of why I enjoyed this reading.